I've been in Mexico for 3 days and really I'm not that enthused to order and compose my observations except for this. A complaint. Of course.

I forgot how trivial tasks become non-trivial when you don't speak the language. Buying toothpaste is a draining ordeal. Train tickets are a torture. You go in with a very specific request, and they absolutely have to cheerfully give you options, and after they come to understand that you don't understand them and want specifically what you asked for, they feel obliged to give you yet more options you can't understand.

Word perfect "I would like this [point point point] please" is an inadequate tactic here.

Word perfect "Can I have 20 train tickets" should not be a five-minute struggle. Yes, you have a fancy swipe card I can buy, but as you can plainly deduce, especially as I have explained it in your own language, I have no idea what your instructions for its use mean. Is it in your power to just tear of the twenty tickets I asked for? Clearly yes, so just do it. Fine, I'll buy the damned swipe card then. How many charges do I want on it, you enquire. 20! Twenty! TWENTY! Fine I'll take fifty. Or at least I think I did. I don't actually know what the result of that discussion was, except that I could see sheets of 20+ paper tickets and I didn't get one.

Far from being lazy types of stereotype, they are too damned keen to help, just not in a very considered manner.